No Prizes for You — Infinite Poipole Control
Today I’m talking about a crazy deck in Standard, Poipole Control; you might have heard of this deck referred to as “Infinity Stones”. Poipole is usually evolved into Naganadel in Blacephalon-GX, but in here you’re going to be using it as your main attacker. While it won’t be taking Prizes itself, it will allow you to bide time and set up crafty plays you’d never fathom in any other deck. Similar to Shedinja Control decks, Knockout Reviver stops an opponent from taking Prizes when they’ve managed to Knock Out Poipole. Whittling your opponent’s resources down to the point where you can deck them out takes time, but there are other cards in this deck to speed up the process. Along with all this, there are a few other win conditions to be mindful of. Before I get any further, how can any deck consistently attack with Knockout Reviver without playing Malamar to accelerate Psychic Energy? Nothing can, so you’re playing Malamar in this deck to solve that! Playing four Poipole already, it only makes sense to play both Naganadel-GX from Unified Minds and Naganadel-GX from Forbidden Light for some other options. Ultra Conversion turns your deck into a super speedy “Zoroark-GX deck and the Stinger GX one can unlock some Prize card-related win conditions. Let’s look at the list and talk about win conditions!
List and Win Conditions
“Checkmate”
Stinger GX is still amazing in a format filled with TAG TEAM Pokemon-GX. Just like with the Zoroark-GX / Naganadel-GX from last format, you can hit into a TAG TEAM Pokemon-GX with something like Giratina, use Stinger GX, then finish that damaged Pokemon off with Espurr or through some other means.
Deck Out
Weezing and Jessie and James help out in this department quite a bit. Formerly, the deck would have to race through the game — hoping the opponent would play it and not just draw and pass — now you can relax a little bit since you can forcefully discard cards time to time. This is still slower with limited space to play multiple copies, but recovering them through Brock's Grit and Lusamine, respectfully, does the job.
Tina Time
Shadow Impact is just as good in here as it is in Malamar decks. You can still attack, put on pressure, and try to take Prizes if your opponent refuses to “play the game” and tries to run you out of time if you’re attempting the deck out strategy. Distortion Door gives you “infinite” Giratina so you can do this time and time again. Combining this strategy with the aforementioned Espurr puts on more pressure and allows you to reach for Prizes that your opponent may be safeguarding on the Bench. Shedinja is included in the deck to deny Prizes your opponent could take to win the game, but more importantly it can go on Giratina so that when you do decide to attack with it your opponent still accomplishes nothing as they would if you were using Knockout Reviver. You can stream the Giratina with Shedinja loop over and over until you’re the winner of the match.
Card Explanations
Four Poipole
This is the main attacker of the deck and you’ll be going through a lot of them. With only 70 HP you’ll almost always be one-shot after using Knockout Reviver, the only consolation is that your opponent won’t be getting a Prize for it. Having four makes it so that you don’t have to use Brock’s Grit every single turn and you can manage your resources a little better. I think you would play more if you could, so four makes the most sense, I highly recommend it — sometimes you evolve one, too, so the more the merrier.
Two Naganadel-GX from Unified Minds and Two Naganadel-GX from Forbidden Light
Each of these is imperative to your strategy and prizing either can be devastating. The first is a consistency crutch you use nearly every game (discarding the other Naganadel-GX or a spare Poipole) and the next playing into the “checkmate” strategy. To speak to the somewhat confusing inclusion of these in general (why would you want to evolve from your attacker, Poipole?) — these give this deck much-wanted flexibility to pursue other win conditions instead of completely focusing on one. Anyone knows that multiple ways to win are better than one. If you prize either of these (if you were just playing one) those extra strategies go out the window, so playing two is very good to have.
Three Inkay and Three Malamar
Without a Malamar line of any number you would never be able to stream Knockout Reviver. Giratina would never be an option either, nor would Espurr. Malamar needs to be in the deck for it to function. Say your opponent targets a Malamar, then what? Have another in play so that’s not as damaging. Two Malamar in play is ideal so playing a line of three is perfect to give you good odds of doing that each game.
This concludes the public portion of this article.
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